Public Versus Secret Reserve Prices in Ebay Auctions: Results from a Pokemon Field Experiment
32 Pages Posted: 24 Mar 2001 Last revised: 12 Nov 2022
Date Written: March 2001
Abstract
Sellers in eBay auctions have the opportunity to choose both a public minimum bid amount and a secret reserve price. We ask, empirically, whether the seller is made better or worse off by setting a secret reserve above a low minimum bid, versus the option of making the reserve public by using it as the minimum bid level. In a field experiment, we auction 50 matched pairs of Pok‚mon cards on eBay, half with secret reserves and half with equivalently high public minimum bids. We find that secret reserve prices make us worse off as sellers, by reducing the probability of the auction resulting in a sale, deterring serious bidders from entering the auction, and lowering the expected transaction price of the auction. We also present evidence that some sellers choose to use secret reserve prices for reasons other than increasing their expected auction prices.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Economic Insights from Internet Auctions: A Survey
By Patrick Bajari and Ali Hortacsu
-
By Sulin Ba and Paul A. Pavlou
-
By Paul A. Pavlou and Sulin Ba
-
The Value of Reputation on Ebay: A Controlled Experiment
By Paul Resnick, Richard J. Zeckhauser, ...
-
The Dynamics of Seller Reputation: Theory and Evidence from Ebay
By Luis M. B. Cabral and Ali Hortacsu
-
The Dynamics of Seller Reputation: Theory and Evidence from Ebay
By Luis M. B. Cabral and Ali Hortacsu